The painted signs that appear-'Pension Coyote'-are
leftovers from the making of Italian film Honolulu Baby (2001), set in a
nameless South American town populated entirely by beautiful women.

The Pension Coyote originally served as the general's
house in El Condor, where actress Marianna Hill strategically undressed in
front of a second-floor window to distract the fortress guards, while Jim Brown
and Lee Van Cleef quietly climbed the fortress walls.

The crumbling fort sits on private land, accessible only
by hiking from a nearby access road.

Casa del Paraiso was used in The Wind and the Lion, where
Eden Pedecaris (Candice Bergen) and her children are kidnapped during a raid on
their luxurious manor home. The manor house scenes were filmed at the Casa del
Paraiso, now long abandoned, on the outskirts of Almería city. Director John
Milius was to return a few years later and use some of the same locations for
Conan the Barbarian (1982).

The interior of Casa Santa Isabel. John Lennon rented
this villa while he spent three months in Almería in 1966 during the filming of
Richard Lester's black comedy How I Won the War. Reportedly, it was here that
Lennon began writing the verses to Strawberry Fields Forever. The house was
abandoned for many years, but now houses a museum of Almería's film history.

Iglesia de las Salinas. The Iglesia de Las Salinas de
Cabo de Gata is a Catholic church constructed in 1907 to serve workers from the
nearby salt refinery. Just meters away from the Mediterranean Sea, the building
has become weather-beaten by wind and sea salt over the years. In Patton (1970),
the church appears in the background when British Commander Field Marshal
Montgomery, battling the Germans on the east coast of Sicily, learns that
General Patton plans to take Messina and vows to beat him to it. More recent
films have also passed through here, including Half of Oscar (2010) and Living
Is Easy with Eyes Closed (2013).

Some of the cave scenes from Conan the Barbarian were
filmed inside a large cavern in the quarries of La Molineta on the outskirts of
AlmerÌa city. The cave also appeared in Fort Apache (1972) and other Westerns,
and later housed an underground set for the film Solarbabies (1986). In 2011,
the site was slated for redevelopment as the site of a future shopping mall.
Demolition crews began to tear away at the rock while a group called ìSalvemos
La Molinetaî held demonstrations to have the site declared a cultural treasure.
But the economic crisis brought work to a halt, leaving the quarry in its
current half-demolished state.

In Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Lawrence and his small band
of fighters stop at an oasis before crossing the Nefud desert to attack Aqaba.
The oasis was constructed in a dry riverbed, the Rambla Viciana, with a
man-made pond and palm trees shipped from Morocco. The palm trees remained and
the site appeared in other films over the years, including For a Few Dollars
More and The Valley of Gwangi (1969).

Abandoned western facades along the road to Tabernas.
Photographer Mark Parascandola said: 'As a photographer, I was initially drawn
to the locations for similar reasons filmmakers have been drawn here over the
years,' said Mr Parascandola, whose grandparents lived in Almeria before moving
to New York in 1930s.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.